“Reduce, reuse, recycle” is not a phrase that usually runs through typical college students’ minds as they toss their empty Starbucks cups into the trash after a morning coffee jolt.

In most of the campus buildings at WSU there are receptacles for collecting many types of recyclable waste, such as plastic bottles, aluminum cans and paper. However, students still chuck their empty water bottles and discard newspapers into the trash instead of the proper recycling bins.

WSU is paying $95 a ton to dispose of garbage produced across campus said Judi Dunn Gray, WSU’s recycling and sustainability education coordinator.

“This adds up to $400,000 a year to throw away stuff on campus, and half of it can be recycled,” Dunn said. She said this is an astounding number, considering that half the campus’ trash is paper that could have been recycled.

“I can think of a lot better use for education dollars than filling a hole in the ground and that is what we are doing when we are throwing things away that can be reused,” she said.

However, WSU is starting to do something about the amount of un-recycled trash the campus produces.

WSU became involved with the program Recyclemania last year. Recyclemania is a friendly competition among colleges and universities across the nation to see which school can recycle the most materials during a ten-week period, Gray said.

“The goal of the program is to bring recycling to the forefront of students, staff and faculty,” she said. WSU is second overall among the Pac 10 schools – behind the University of Oregon.

The university’s Waste Wise program has also begun several programs to promote recycling education. The Waste Wise program is promoting the use of reusable coffee mugs at locations on campus that serve coffee. After the purchase of 10 coffees in a reusable mug, students will receive a prize from Thomas Hammer Coffee and a chance to enter a drawing to win a coffee basket.

The next Recyclemania program will be recycling pizza boxes to earn free pizzas, Gray said.

WSU also introduced composting into the Recyclemania program this year. Last week, the university collected 10,000 pounds of recyclable compost, Gray said.

WSU’s other goals for recycling includes the transition to using completely post-consumer content paper.

The university uses 72-percent recycled paper and 28-percent virgin paper, said John Glass, director of materials and research management for Central Stores.

The goal is to reach 100 percent use of recycled paper on campus.

“Last year the university used 91 million sheets of paper, which is enough to fill 28 buildings the size of Webster – that’s over 700 feet of paper,” Gray said.

Raising students’ awareness about the amount of waste they produce on a daily basis is a key aspect of WSU’s recycling programs. However, the university is not only striving to recycle more products, but to create a market for the use of recycled materials.

“You can collect all recyclables you want, but if you don’t have market, then there is no point,” Gray said.

The Waste Wise program is planning a Green Zone at Hillside Dining center. The dining center plans to begin recycling all food scraps and compostable material – as well as environmentally friendly plates that are compostable – in the near future, Gray said.

Kristen Koenig, a member WSU’s Sustainability Club and graduate student in education, said the Green Zone plan is great for the university.

“I would hope that we endeavor to do [Green Zone] at all of the dining centers,” she said. “I am hoping that it raises more awareness among students and why this matters.” There are many options to reduce the use of materials and production of unrecyclable waste, Koenig said.

“I always see plastics, aluminum, glass and newspaper in the trash – there are recycling bins all around campus, so just use those things.” she said.

The real issue is that students don’t understand the relevance of their personal actions, Glass said.

“They just think, ‘Well I am just one person, so what if I don’t recycle this bottle.’ ... But if everyone thought that, no one would recycle,” he said.